BGEC 101: Communication Skills - Comprehensive Vocabulary

Flashcards covering key concepts, grammar rules, sentence classifications, common errors, varieties of English, and communication theories from BGEC 101: Communication Skills.

Communication

The process of exchanging information, ideas, thoughts, and messages between individuals, groups, or organizations through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.

Technical Definition of Communication

A perspective defining communication simply as "the sending and receiving of messages or the transmission of messages from one person to another" (Steinberg, 2006).

Transactional Definition of Communication

A perspective defining communication as a process of exchanging messages and negotiating meaning in order to establish and maintain a relationship (Steinberg, 2006).

Communication Channel (Medium)

The means or system used to transmit a message from the sender to the receiver, such as phone calls, emails, text messages, or Learning Management Systems.

Completeness

A principle of the 7 Cs stating that a message must convey all facts required by the audience, taking into consideration the receiver's mindset.

Conciseness

A principle of the 7 Cs defined as conveying a message using the smallest number of words possible, saving time and expenses for both sender and receiver.

Concreteness

A principle of the 7 Cs requiring that a message be specific and definite rather than general or vague, preventing misunderstandings.

Communication Ethics

A set of moral principles, norms, and values that govern communication behavior in personal, professional, and business environments.

Candour

An ethical communication practice referring to truthfulness, honesty, and frankness in communicating with others.

Concord

The grammatical agreement or harmony between sentence elements, such as subject and verb, determiner and noun, or pronoun and antecedent.

Grammatical Concord

Subject-verb agreement governed strictly by grammatical rules, where a singular subject takes a singular verb and a plural subject takes a plural verb.

Notional Concord

Subject-verb agreement based on the meaning or idea conveyed by the subject rather than its strict grammatical form (e.g., collective nouns taking a plural verb).

Proximity Concord

Agreement in which the verb matches the number of the noun or pronoun closest to it rather than the main subject (e.g., with "either… or" or prepositional "of" phrases).

Tense

The grammatical category that indicates the time of an action or state described by a verb (past, present, or future) across various aspects.

Sentence

A grammatically complete group of words containing a subject and a predicate that expresses a complete thought.

Simple Sentence

A structural sentence type consisting of only one independent clause and no dependent clauses.

Compound Sentence

A structural sentence type containing two or more coordinated independent clauses joined by coordinating conjunctions (FANBOYS), conjunctive adverbs, or semicolons, with no dependent clauses.

Complex Sentence

A structural sentence type containing exactly one independent clause and at least one dependent clause introduced by a subordinator or relative pronoun.

Compound-Complex Sentence

A structural sentence type containing two or more coordinated independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.

Declarative Sentence

A functional sentence type used to provide information or state a fact, typically punctuated by a full stop.

Imperative Sentence

A functional sentence type used to issue a command, order, or request, ending with an exclamation mark or a full stop.

Sentence Fragment

A group of words lacking essential clausal elements such as a subject or a finite verb, leaving it incomplete and unable to stand alone as a sentence.

Dependent-Clause Fragment

A sentence fragment that begins with a subordinator (such as because, although, or when) but is not joined to an independent clause.

Run-On Sentence

A grammatical error in which two or more complete thoughts or independent clauses are joined together without sufficient punctuation or linking words.

Fused Sentence

A specific run-on error in which two or more independent clauses are joined with no punctuation separating them.

Comma Splice

A specific run-on error occurring when a comma is incorrectly used by itself to join two independent clauses without a coordinating conjunction.

Language Variety

A form of language that differs systematically and coherently from other forms of the same language based on geography, social group, or functional context.

Field of Discourse

A dimension of language variety based on the specific activity, discipline, or professional domain in which participants are engaged (e.g., Legal English, Medical English).

Language Register

The style, tone, and level of formality adopted in communication depending on the audience, purpose, topic, and location.

Active Voice

A verb voice where the grammatical subject of the sentence performs the action expressed by the verb.

Passive Voice

A verb voice where the subject receives the action of the verb, formed using a form of the verb "to be" followed by the past participle.

Receptive Skills

Language skills through which individuals receive, decode, and extract meaning from discourse they read or hear (reading and listening).

Productive Skills

Language skills in which an individual actively produces language to transmit messages via speech or writing.

Schema

The pre-existent mental representation and background knowledge of the world that a reader or listener deploys to comprehend discourse.

Ambiguity

The property of a word, phrase, or sentence that makes it open to more than one interpretation or meaning.

Lexical Ambiguity

Ambiguity that occurs when a single word or lexical item within a sentence possesses more than one distinct meaning.

Structural Ambiguity

Ambiguity occurring at the syntactic level when a phrase or sentence has more than one possible constituent grammatical structure.

Homonymy

A lexical relationship where two or more words share the same phonetic or written form but have completely unrelated meanings.

Homophone

A word that shares the same pronunciation as another word but has a different meaning, origin, and spelling (e.g., new and knew).

Homograph

A word that shares the same written spelling as another word but has a different meaning (e.g., bat and bat).

Polysemy

A semantic phenomenon where a single word possesses multiple related meanings (e.g., "head" as a body part, river source, or institutional leader).